The #1 Place to Buy Your Investments

Today I’m excited to have Edward Kholodenko on the show who is the CEO of Questrade.

If you’re a long time listener of the show then you know that I actually use Questrade to buy all my investments. So, when Questrade reached out to me about interviewing their CEO I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask him the questions that I have, and that I know a lot of the listeners have about their brokerage.

I currently save at least $480 per year in fees by using Questrade so needless to say I’m a big fan, especially since they let me purchase ETFs for free. At the time of this writing, they are the only brokerage in Canada that I know of that offers this.

It’s worth mentioning that this episode is not sponsored by Questrade, or anything like that. I’m simply a big fan of what they offer, have been using them for years, and thought this would be a great opportunity to ask their CEO some top questions that you should know the answers to, when choosing a brokerage for your investments.

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Question’s Covered

1. One of the reasons that I chose to use Questrade for all my retirement accounts is because you let your customers buy ETFs for free (or almost for free if we include ECN fees). Is the ability to buy ETFs for free through Questrade something that you see your company offering long term, or is this more of a short to mid-term offer that’s temporarily being used to attract new customers?

2. I imagine you get your fair share of potential customers that are reluctant to keep their investments at an online discount brokerage like Questrade, vs at one of the largest brick and mortar Canadian banks. Can you speak a bit about the security that Questrade uses compared to some of these largest banks?

3. What if there was a scenario where Questrade got hacked, or if somebody’s account got hacked because their password was compromised (through no fault of Questrade). What kind of protection or insurance is provided in those scenarios? Would the $10 million in private insurance cover the customer in these cases?

4. Can you give us an overview of the state of the online brokerage space in Canada? In particular, what trends and developments are currently happening, where do you see things are heading in terms of technology and innovation, and what can consumers expect in the coming years? Are there certain things that Questrade is really prioritizing for the coming years as one of Canada’s largest discount brokers?

5. Can you talk about the lack of financial transparency when it comes to fees that Canadians are paying on their investments? There have been rules that have come out (CRM2) to help with this but is there more that Canadians should know?

6. As far as I know, Questrade doesn’t provide some of the more ultra safe investment options such as GICs. For those that want that high level of safety (despite the lower returns), what options do you suggest for them?

7. You probably hear a lot of myths from potential customers about online investing. Can you share some of the most common and critical misconceptions that Canadian have?

8. Please tell us a bit more about where we can learn from you, and learn more about Questrade.

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